The following material is being reprinted from the Del Rey Internet Newsletter. To subscribe to this free, monthly e-newsletter, visit http://www.delreybooks.com.

On December 26, 2007, Gregory Frost’s new fantasy novel Shadowbridge comes out and in support of the book’s release, Del Rey is giving away TEN ADVANCE copies!!! All Del Rey is asking in return is that the winners email their comments about the book, good or bad, to the publisher. To enter the drawing, please send your name + address in the body of an email HERE with the subject heading SHADOWBRIDGE. Deadline is Friday, November 9th. Winners, chosen at random, will be notified by email. In sending your comments on the book, please tell Del Rey if you do not want them to publish the comments in a future DRIN.

“Sprung from a timeless dream, Shadowbridge is a world of linked spans arching high above glittering seas. It is a world of parading ghosts, inscrutable gods, and dangerous magic. Most of all, it is a world of stories. No one knows those intertwining stories better than Leodora, a young shadow puppeteer who travels Shadowbridge collecting the tales and myths of each place she passes through, then retelling them in performances whose genius has begun to attract fame…and less welcome attention. Now, as the strands of a destiny she did not choose begin to tighten around her, Leodora is about to cross the most perilous bridge of all—the one leading from the past to the future…”Official Gregory Frost WebsiteOrder “Shadowbridge” HEREInterview with Naomi Novik, author of Empire of Ivory:Official Temeraire Website

Read An Excerpt HEREDel Rey: First of all, congratulations on winning the 2007 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. It must have been an incredible experience not just to win but to be there in Japan to accept the honor.

Naomi Novik: It was amazing. Just the fact of getting nominated for the Campbell and the Hugo alone was fantastic, not to mention that it was a good excuse to go to Japan. You know, it's a cliche that it's an honor just to be nominated, but I profoundly felt that way. I was asked by an interviewer very early on, before His Majesty's Dragon came out, which I would rather have: a New York Times bestseller or a Hugo Award. Well, I didn't get a Hugo, but to me, the Campbell was just as much of an honor.

DR: And you didn't do too badly with the Times, either. Your latest book, Empire of Ivory, debuted at #15 on the Times list, I believe.

NN: Those two things both matter deeply to me as an indication that people are reading my work and connecting with it. It's extremely important to me as a writer that I feel I'm reaching people. I don't need to be making a fortune, but I do want to feel that I'm not writing into the ether. And of course what it also means is the freedom to keep going. That's the real reward, that I get to keep doing this.

DR: Empire of Ivory is the fourth book in the Temeraire series. Are you planning a definite conclusion for the series, or is it open-ended? And how far ahead do you plot things out?

NN: I definitely know in detail what's going to be happening a couple of books ahead of where I am. And then I have a general game plan where I know that the books end with the end of the Napoleonic wars, and the series has a definite arc to it.

DR: What year are we in now?

NN: Empire ends in August of 1807.

DR: You're not very explicit about exact dates in the books. Readers sort of have to infer what year it is by their own knowledge of history.

NN: Yes, I have a timeline myself, and you can pin things down pretty well by the placement of historical events like Trafalgar. But I generally don't want to nail things down too strongly. For one thing, travel in this time period was very different. A sea journey, the same journey, might take four months or eight months, depending on what time of year you did it, what kind of weather you ran into, what kind of ship you were on, whether you just had bad luck. And it was very much subject to the vagaries of the wind and the sea, and so I actually take the liberty of letting journeys sometimes take however much time is best for my story, my narrative, because I am aiming for an historical affect.